An apparatus, system, and method are disclosed for implementing failover in a polling adapter without support from an application server. A priority list is stored as part of an adapter configuration that specifies the server names that will participate in a group cluster. Adapters associated with the servers, in addition to accessing the event table when active, access a failover table which contains information about which adapter is currently active and when it last polled the event table. When a preconfigured failover interval has elapsed since the last poll of the event table by the active adapter, a next highest priority takes over the processing duties by polling the event table and logging its last poll time in the failover table.